Accidents

I got one.... A drivere made a set of MT's and left the yard. He makes it all the way to the freeway (10 miles)on ramp which is an up and over cloverleaf. As he is climbing the on ramp the front box detatches from the tractor rides the gaurdrail then breaks it and gets stuck. Traffic is blocked for hours. We arrive on scene and try to free the trailers from the rail. No dice The hook came and removed the set from the rail. The tractor had a malfunction with the 5th wheel it was stuck in the open position not locking. The driver said he did a tug test and felt locked. He asked CHP would he be charged with an accident and CHP did not respond. He told me later that they never charged him with an accident. Now question....Is this an accident or incident?

 

Well I have had several of these kind of incidents where I had to go "recover" the trailer...

I get the same thing you said... Pinned it, tug tested it, felt good and then down the road BANG...

Is it not part of the pretrip to do a visual inspection to make sure the jaws are closed... BUT in defense of others, I have also played with the pins and jaws and found that they may look closed but are not totally latched..
A lot of the actual determination of accident or not, would be done in that case by the mechanics who inspect the fifth wheel assembly...

But the determination also would depend on if there was a police report done do to traffic being blocked, property damage (private or state) and if a tow was needed to remove the vehicle (not to just get it back to the roadway)

 

that if there's no police report then it won't go on your record.